Friday, May 13, 2016

Turkish Chicken with Pilaw

I bought a whole cornfed chicken yesterday and I had no idea what to cook with it.
As always there are lots of possibilities:
first: bung it in the oven with a bit salt and pepper and that`s it
second: go through your memory bank or 300 cookbooks and look for an idea
third: surfe through YT and get lucky.

Chicken with Pilaw and Veggies

I got lucky, I stumbled on YT over a regional German TV show where a Turkish chef makes a wonderful dish during the reports about events in the region. There are 45 videos to watch. His name is Orhan Tancgil.
He has his own foodblog "Koch dich türkisch" and an Internet shop and is well known in the Rhineland region. I found out about him about a week ago.

I changed his recipe a bit, because I used ingredients I had on hand in the cupboards. recipe:
1 whole free range chickenPilaw as side dish and filling for the chicken:
1 cup longgrain rice
2 cups water
2 tbsp butter
30 g Almonds whole or chopped
30 g pine nuts
30 g raisins or currants or Goji berries
salt

veggies:
a tray with some water and a bit of olive oil
1 red bell pepper
1 courgette
3 spring onions
salt and pepper

Start with a pan with butter and nuts and raisins, then add the washed rice and coat it evenly in the butter, add salt and the water, bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and let the rice get done, but not to soft!

In a pestel and mortal dump in the salt and the garlic cloves and start mashing them, add the allspice and pepper berries and make a paste, add the pomegranate syrup and the tahini and the oil and give it a good mix. Clean the chicken and then marinate the chicken with it -you can do that in advance and keep the chicken in the fridge for a couple of hours.

stuff a lot of Pilaw into the chicken

Preheat the oven 200 C
Fill some of the cooked rice into the cavity of the chicken and close it with some toothpicks. The rest of the rice is eaten later with the veggies and the chicken.
Place the veggies on a try beneath the chicken and bake everything for 1 hour or until the chicken has 85 C core temperature.